


all the transparence (in the shades of red)

by shellybelle



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Sex, Spoilers, total disregard of canon deaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-07
Updated: 2012-07-07
Packaged: 2017-11-09 08:15:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/453308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shellybelle/pseuds/shellybelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is not always about remaking, or about reconstruction. Sometimes, it is just about trust. After New York, Natasha gives Clint a week.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all the transparence (in the shades of red)

After New York, Natasha gives Clint a week to clear his head. One week.

It’s their standard. Natasha knows what it means to be unmade.  _When they pour you out and pour something else in_ , Clint had said on the Helicarrier, hoarse and rough. It was accurate enough, phrased more prettily than Natasha might have done. But then, in his fashion, Clint had always had a way with words.

She gives him a week.

She debriefs with Fury and cleans every weapon in her extensive arsenal twice over; she drinks expensive vodka with Pepper Potts and lets Tony jabber in her ear about his plans for what seems to be a very high-tech, grown-up clubhouse. She re-reads Anna Karenina in the original Russian and spends more money than is practical on a pair of sex-red Louboutin pumps.

And then she calls Clint.

He doesn’t answer the first call, but she doesn’t expect him to. He doesn’t answer the second call either, or the third, and after the fourth (she does not leave voicemails), she sends him a text message.  _Let me in_ , she writes, and she leaves it at that.

There is an underlying message:  _I can find you if I need to, but it will be easier for us both if you tell me where you are._

A minute goes by. Two, three. Natasha waits; she has always been good at waiting.

Her phone buzzes on the table. He has sent her a string of numbers, cut in half: coordinates.

She finds him in a motel in Buffalo, six miles off the interstate and tucked between a suspicious-looking Chinese restaurant and a bicycle repair shop. He opens the door before she knocks and she takes off her sunglasses, raises her eyebrows, and says, “Buffalo? Really?”

“I like Buffalo.” He sits down on one of the two double beds and lounges back, deliberately casual, all blue jeans and bare feet and a faded Rolling Stones t-shirt. “No one comes looking for you in Buffalo. Too far to drive.”

 _Not if someone really wants to find you_ , she thinks, but she says nothing, just sits down on the other bed, crosses one leg over the other, and waits.

Silence is not unusual between them. When they first became partners Clint talked (and talked, and talked, and talked) and Natasha listened because she had never heard someone  _talk_ so much, and his voice was too rough, too honest, too real for her block out. She drank his words in like oxygen until he had nothing else to say, and then she listened to his breathing, captivated by the sound of it, by the concept of a  _partner_ , by the idea that this man would lay down his life for hers for no reason other than loyalty. Natasha had inspired quite a lot in her tenure as the Widow, but loyalty?

Loyalty was new.

Clint speaks first. “I hear Coulson’s alive.”

“Yes.” It had come as a shock to everyone but Natasha, because Fury’s lies were nothing new and it had been too convenient, really, too useful, and Coulson is nothing if not a perfectionist. Still, when the news came through, she went to the hospital to see for herself, and when he caught her eye across the ward and gave her the tiniest wave, she’d found an empty supply closet and let herself cry for an entire minute. “He wants to see you.”

“I can’t.” He doesn’t say more and she doesn’t press him. He turns his gaze to the ceiling. His eyes are his again, the blue clear and calm, the wild, vivid blue of Loki’s magic gone. “You waited longer than I expected.”

It’s not a question. “Yes,” she says. “I’ve been there. I knew you needed…space.”

Clint snorts a laugh. “Something like that.” He rolls on his side to face her and there is agony on his face behind the smirk and the posture; he is crying out to her and she wants to gather him into her arms and press him close until he is Clint again, and it is not a feeling she’s used to.

“Clint.” She sits next to him on the bed and he tenses, poised like a bird ready to take flight, and she schools herself to patience: not touching, not reaching, waiting for him like he’d waited for her. He relaxes in fractions, a muscle at a time, watching her with wary eyes, and she forces her fingers not to clutch at the bedspread. “You know I won’t hurt you.”

“That’s not what I’m afraid of,” he says, and she remembers Loki’s words,  _slowly, intimately, in every way he knows you fear_. He knows too many of her secrets, and she too many of his. What would she have told Loki, if it had been her under his spell? “Tasha—”

“I know,” she interrupts, because she doesn’t want to hear the apologies, the regrets, the uncertainties. “I told you what I did because I trusted you. I still trust you.”

“I don’t trust myself,” he murmurs, and was this what he’d felt like, watching her try to remake herself, after Stalingrad, after Moscow, after Beijing? It  _hurts_ , watching him, it hurts her down to her fingers and her toes; it hurts to the roots of her hair and the tips of her teeth just how badly she wants to fix him. He’s guarding himself against her and she can see it; she wants to peel off his armor and suture the cracks back together until he’s whole again.

She can’t, though, not by herself, so instead she holds out her hand and waits. When Clint only looks at her blankly, she sighs. “Your gun, Clint. Give me your gun.”

He doesn’t ask how she knows he has one. “Why?”

“Because I need to show you that I still trust you.”

Clint raises one eyebrow. “If you trust me, why do you need my gun?”

Natasha rolls her eyes. “We both know that my darkest fears have nothing to do with being shot at. We have things to work on, and they don’t involve being armed.” She wriggles her fingers at him. “Give me the gun.”

Clint hesitates a moment more, then reaches back to pull his .22 from the waistband of his jeans. He hands it to her and she empties the chamber, sliding off the bed and putting the gun on the dresser. She feels his gaze heavy on her back as she removes her own holster and puts it beside Clint’s, pulls the two knives from the hidden pockets in her boots. She lifts her shirt to unbuckle the throwing knife to the pile of weapons. Clint’s bow and quiver sit against the wall, the smooth metal lovingly cleaned and polished, and she feels a hint of pride at the fact that even lost and broken and unsure of every aspect of his life, he still takes the time to take care of his weapons. She slips off her jacket, lays it next to the knives, and returns to the bed, sitting down on the edge to unzip her boots and slide them off. She remembers with a fond smile the first time Clint had realized that she bought her socks in twelve-packs from Target just like he did— _kind of spoils the femme fatale illusion_ , he’d said, and she’d laughed (laughing was still new to her, in those days, and even her smiles had made Clint grin). Natasha pulls her socks off and tucks them neatly into her boots, turning to see Clint watching her through wary, calculating eyes. “Scoot over,” she says, and he does, giving her room to lie down next to him, curling on her side to face him where he lies on his back. She watches the line of his jaw, the veins in his hands, knows he is not comfortable so close to her. She knows he’s afraid of her, of her body, but mostly he is afraid of himself, ands he knows only one way to fix him. “Look at me,” she says, and he closes his eyes before the briefest of moments before he turns to her. She reaches for him, and he draws back.

“Don’t,” he says, and the fear in his voice is as clear to her as a wrong chord in a sonata, strange and foreign to her ears, and something inside her  _breaks_.

“Moe serdtse,” she murmurs, the endearment slipping out before she can stop it, and his eyes widen ever-so-slightly, his guard dropping long enough for her to reach out and touch her fingers to his cheek. “Clint.”

(He told her, once, how much he loved the sound of his name in her voice. She wonders, now, if it’s still true, or if Loki took that from them, too.)

He closes his eyes at the touch of her skin on his, and when he opens them they’re bright around the edges. “Tasha,” he whispers, just his name, but it says  _I’m scared_ and  _I don’t want to hurt you_ and  _please go_ and  _don’t ever leave_ all at once.

She is a spy first. She knows how to hear the words he doesn’t say. “I’m going to kiss you now,” she tells him.

It’s not an order, but not a question, either. “Okay,” Clint says, and Natasha rolls onto her stomach, props herself up on her elbows, and touches her lips to his. It is so soft she almost can’t call it a kiss, but she stays, her lips against his, until she is sure (until she is sure that he is sure) that he won’t snap and shoot her or run. His body relaxes slowly, the tension leaving him in tiny fractions, and when he has gone pliant under her she presses her lips down, parting just slightly to take his lower lip between them. He tenses again but she’s expecting it, worrying his lip gently between hers until he relaxes again.

This time she breaks the kiss, drawing back just an inch, giving him room to breathe, to decide. He doesn’t move, just looks at her, and there his trust in his eyes, all over his face. “Okay?” she asks.

He nods, once, the barest hint of movement. “Okay.”

She leans forward, her lips on his again, and this time he doesn’t tense, just opens his lips under hers. She slips her tongue into his mouth and he makes a faint sound, barely there, and she feels his hand move into her hair, as if to pull her closer. She reaches back and takes it in hers, presses it back against the bed and holding there for a moment until he squeezes her fingers in understanding. She lets him go, then, kissing him once, chastely, in acknowledgement, and then she deepens the kiss again.

They stay like that for a long time, kissing, just kissing. She lets him relearn her mouth, she relearns his, as if their bodies are brand-new, fresh off the factory floor. They keep their hands to themselves, he has one turned into the bedspread, the other under the pillow; hers rest idle, clasped together between her bent elbows, forearms flat to the bed. They kiss deeply and gently, chastely and playfully, slowly and lazily. Natasha’s hair gets in their mouths and they both laugh; Clint does a dirty twist with his tongue that makes her nip at his lip in retaliation; Clint bumps his nose against her cheek and she rubs Eskimo kisses against his nose. They kiss for what feels like hours, touching only at lips and tongues, because as much as she wants to touch his face, to feel his hands in her hair, that this is what he needs: softness, sweetness, the knowledge that he can still be gentle, still be safe, still be in control. She thinks about the countless kisses they’ve shared over the years—quick pecks during sparring matches; deep, filthy kisses after missions, their bloodstained hands scrambling for purchase on broken, sweaty skin; furtive makeout sessions between debriefs. She thinks about the hotel room in Budapest, about her quarters on the Helicarrier, about Tony Stark’s desk during her tenure as Natalie Rushman from legal; she thinks about the Russian tundra and the mountains in Japan and the rooftops and Paris, and she thinks that none of their kisses were like this, kisses just for the sake of touch, of closeness, of trust. His lashes flutter against her cheek; she is acutely aware of every part of his body, the stubble on his cheeks and the half-healed cuts on his arms and the new scars she knows he has hidden under his clothing.

The shadows cast by the window blinds have shifted when she skims her fingers under the hem of his shirt. His breath hitches but she doesn’t stop, just runs the pads of her fingers over his skin before breaking away from him. “Off,” she murmurs. She sits up and takes off her own tank and bra while he pulls his shirt over his head. She hisses between her teeth; even after a week, he looks battered. Scrapes and cuts litter his chest and shoulders, and a freshly stitched scar winds around his side. There’s a purple-green bruise across his ribs and side, and she can tell from the way he moves that it probably extends over his back as well.

He is a mess, and he is beautiful.

Clint lies back again and Natasha shifts, leaning over him, her elbows on either side of his head. The tips of her breasts brush his bare chest and he runs his hands over the skin of her back, just long enough to make her shiver, before he clasps his hands above his head and looks up at her, patient, calm. She brushes her lips against his. “Still alive?”

He swallows, and she feels the movement against her chest. “Yes.”

“So am I.” She kisses him and he kisses back. It’s still gentle but there’s an edge of desire, and she can feel his hesitation. The touch of bare skin on bare skin makes her feel warm all over; it’s an effort not to press closer to him, to stem the ache between her legs against him.  _Slow_ , she reminds herself, chants it in a mantra in her head. Clint’s body is responding to her touch but he doesn’t reach for her, and his pulse is steady under her fingers where they rest against his neck. Her hair falls around them, too short to tie back but long enough to catch the sun and cast shades of red across his skin. The color suits him, just like it suits her; they were born to be painted like this, vivid red like fresh-spilled blood.

(But Clint is the one who showed her the other shades of red: fresh-picked cherries in Maine on her birthday, their fingers stained with sweet juice; marinara sauce they made together from tomatoes she bought with her first SHIELD paycheck; the silk cords he used to tie her to the bedposts to show her that there could be sweetness in surrender; the flush that darkens Clint’s cheeks when they stay up late and drink expensive wine; the sunburn on her shoulders when he takes her to Cozumel and she spends the whole day in the clear water, watching the fish and ignoring his suggestion of sunscreen. So many colors, and she’d been living, for so long, in black and white.)

She opens her eyes to find him looking at her. It’s strange, kissing with their eyes open, so close, but she likes it, likes the feeling of his eyes on hers. She touches his jaw, his neck, his hair, and he makes a soft sound against her mouth, something that might have been a sigh if she hadn’t caught it with her lips. She trails her hand down to the waistband of his jeans and the muscles in his abdomen clench. Natasha pauses, asks, “yes?”

He takes a breath, in, out. “Yes.”

(The first time they slept together, he asked her permission each time he touched her.  _Is this okay_ , he’d asked, his fingers millimeters from her breasts.  _Is this okay?_ His hands at her waist, his mouth by her clit, the head of his cock between her legs,  _is this okay_? She found out later that he’d read her file, that he’d made assumptions, that he figured any organization that taught seduction to twelve-year-olds taught them other things as well.  _It wasn’t like that_ , she’d told him, but he’d only shrugged.  _Never hurts to be safe, the first time_ , he says, and she thinks maybe she fell a little bit in love with him that day.)

Her fingers are deft as she unbuttons his jeans and slides the zipper down, and he lifts his hips to help him as she pushes them over his thighs until he can kick them away. His cock is hard against his stomach, red and damp at the tip; she leans over and kisses it, gently, and she hears him swallow. Her own jeans are tighter and she has to stand to pull them off, laying them with her jacket on the dresser. She thinks about the condoms in her jacket pocket and fingers one foil packet, then turns and looks at him. “While you were with Loki, did he—” She stops, thinks, tries again. “Was there anyone?”

“No,” he says, and there’s something in his voice that might be pride. “He tried, I think, but in the back of my head…there was you.”

Natasha puts the condom down on the dresser, still in its wrapper, and returns to the bed. “And you wonder how I know I can trust you,” she murmurs.

Clint looks up at her as she straddles his hips. His fingers twitch, but he doesn’t move. “Is it enough?”

“You remembered me.” She settles over him, feels the length of him against her.

“It could have killed you,” he says, “me remembering you.”

“No,” she whispers. “Clint, it saved us both.” She shifts against him, moves forward. She doesn’t need to use her hands; they have always fit together like puzzle pieces and she lowers herself onto him, sliding down inch by slow, blissful inch. There will be a time for foreplay, for now she is ready for him and she needs him, and from the look on his face as she presses him inside her, he needs her just as badly. She slides her hips down until he’s as deep as she’s ever felt him and then she leans forward, her breasts against his chest and her forehead against his. “Look at me,” she whispers, and he does, pupils blown and lashes trembling. She brushes her fingers through his hair, kisses him. “Don’t close your eyes,” she says, and he nods.

She doesn’t ride him, doesn’t let him thrust. For a long time they are simply still, him inside her, kissing, pressed skin-to-skin and feeling each other breathe. Natasha moves her hands up and twines her fingers with his, and Clint squeezes her hands. She begins to move, only slightly, rocking him inside her, squeezing her inner muscles slowly, clench and release, clench and release.  _Slowly_ , Loki had said,  _slowly, intimately_ , and this is so intimate that her throat feels tight, her eyes are burning. They are both trembling with the effort not to grasp and cling and thrust, and when they kiss it is wet and deep and filthy, everything she won’t do with her body. Heat throbs between her thighs and she swallows against the sounds that threaten to move past her throat, whispering his name.

He’s still looking at her. His cheeks are flushed, his lips red from where he’s bitten them. “ _Tasha_ ,” he says, and on his lips her name is a benediction, a song, a homecoming. A sob forces past her lips and she pushes her hips forward; his fingers clench around her and his body tenses against hers. “Tasha,” he says again, breathless, and she comes with a shudder, pressing every inch of her body against his, and she feels the muscles in his thighs and abdomen clench as he comes inside her with a groan, his lips against hers, her mouth almost swallowing the sound as heat rushes between her legs.

They lay together, breathing, Clint’s breath ragged in her ear and his chest rising and falling under hers. She releases his hands with a squeeze and, sensing permission, he wraps his arms around her, holding her close and pressing kisses against her hair. She swallows hard and surrenders to the embrace. “He didn’t take this from you,” she whispers fiercely. “From either of us. This is  _ours_.”

Clint laughs, a little choked, and she thinks maybe they’re both crying; his cheek is wet against hers. “Thank you,” he says, and the words say so much more than that, but it’s enough and she kisses his cheek.

She summons the energy to move and rolls off the bed, slipping into the bathroom to pee and clean their mingled fluids from between her legs with a damp cloth. He’s asleep when she comes back, mouth slightly open, the lines of tension and pain and fear smoothed from his face. He looks ten years younger asleep and she smiles, triple-checking the locks on the doors and every window before climbing back into bed and curling against him, laying her head on his shoulder. He murmurs her name and drapes his arm over her, and she falls asleep to the beat of his pulse.

When she wakes, fresh sunlight is filtering through the blinds. There’s a sheet draped over her and the bed beside her is cool. She lifts her head off the pillow and sees a folded piece of motel stationary next to one of her guns, cleaned and re-loaded.  _Gone for breakfast_ , the note reads.  _None of that motel shit, found a diner. Back 07:00. C._

The lock clicks and Clint steps inside, a stack of Styrofoam boxes in his hands. He’s showered and shaved and looks worlds better than he had the day before. He grins when he sees her awake and it’s  _his_ grin, light and lopsided and real. “Morning, Red.”

Natasha sits up, lets the blankets pool around her hips. “Good morning,” she says. “You look rested.”

“I feel rested.” He doesn’t say more, and she doesn’t need him to. The fact that they slept for almost ten hours without either of them waking from a nightmare or a security concern says enough. “Are you hungry? I haven’t had an appetite in a week, and I’m starving.”

“Amazing how the body lets you know when it needs food.” She scoots forward as he peels off his boots and socks, coming to sit next to her in the bed. “How long since your last real meal?”

“You don’t want to know.” He hands her one of the containers and she opens it to find a stack of waffles. He’s quiet for a moment, looking at his own breakfast, and Natasha waits. “I want to see Coulson,” he says finally.

Natasha smiles. “We can do that.”

There is something sticky and red on her waffles and she dips her finger in to taste it. “Strawberry syrup,” Clint says, when she raises her eyebrows at him. “Thought you might like it.”

 _Another shade of red_ , she thinks, and it’s sweet, and good, and they eat their breakfasts side-by-side.


End file.
